Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: On Monday, President Trump's Special Envoy for Peace Missions, Steve Witkoff,
Speaker 2: headed to Moscow. He's expected to meet with Russian President
Speaker 2: Vladimir Putin to present the latest proposal for a ceasefire
Speaker 2: and peace plan between Russia and Ukraine. The plan is
Speaker 2: amended from an initial twenty eight point plan the US
Speaker 2: and Russia developed. On Monday, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenski said
Speaker 2: the new plan looks better.
Speaker 1: What we do know is that the US has been
Speaker 1: trying to run different scenarios past each side.
Speaker 2: Nick Wadams leads Bloomberg's national security coverage from Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: There are still so many unknowns and so many questions
Speaker 1: about whether Ukraine's apparent support for the latest agreement is
Speaker 1: just a negotiating strategy trying to put the ball back
Speaker 1: in Ukraine's court. At this point, we really actually have
Speaker 1: no good sense of whether we are any closer to
Speaker 1: a deal than we were about two weeks ago.
Speaker 2: Monday unfolded like a split screen as Witcoff journeyed to Russia.
Speaker 2: Zelenski was in France meeting with President Emmanuel Macron to
Speaker 2: rally European allies.
Speaker 1: The big question is going to be, you know, where
Speaker 1: does Trump land in this perpetual ping ponging between having
Speaker 1: Zelenski's back and then shunning Zelenski, being more favorable to
Speaker 1: Vladimir Putin or getting tough on Vladimir Putin.
Speaker 2: And that leads to the biggest question, will any of
Speaker 2: this flurry of activity bring about the end of the
Speaker 2: nearly four year old war between Russia and Ukraine. I'm
Speaker 2: David Gera and this is the big take from Bloomberg
Speaker 2: News Today on the show the state of play between
Speaker 2: Russia and Ukraine, the developments of the last few days,
Speaker 2: and whether an end to the war could be in sight.
Speaker 2: Nick Wadhams has covered the relationships between the US, Russia,
Speaker 2: and Ukraine for Bloomberg for years, including during President Trump's
Speaker 2: first term before Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two. He's seen firsthand how Ukraine or Russia
Speaker 2: has had the upper hand in different moments. I asked
Speaker 2: Nick to lay the groundwork for me as US Envoy
Speaker 2: Steve Witkoff travels to Moscow and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky
Speaker 2: appeals to European allies. Where do things stand? Who has
Speaker 2: more leverage right now?
Speaker 1: What we know right now is that at least on
Speaker 1: the battlefield, Russia has the upper hand. This is a
Speaker 1: situation that the longer it goes on, the more it
Speaker 1: plays to Russia's advantage, both than terms of manpower and
Speaker 1: military power and current trend lines. The Russians have been
Speaker 1: making slow and very costly progress against Ukrainian forces, but
Speaker 1: they have been making progress. Ukraine is an increasingly in
Speaker 1: an untenable position in terms of the strikes that it's
Speaker 1: been enduring, the strain on its electricity grid, the size
Speaker 1: of its army, and its ability to recruit new troops.
Speaker 1: Russia is just a bigger country with a bigger economy
Speaker 1: and a better ability to keep this going.
Speaker 2: Steve Witkoff heading the Moscow with Jared Kushner, the President's
Speaker 2: son in law. What has the administration said about what
Speaker 2: they're hoping to accomplish in Moscow this week?
Speaker 1: So what we know is that we had that initial
Speaker 1: twenty eight point plan that was apparently worked out between
Speaker 1: the US and Russia. Then that put the ball in
Speaker 1: Ukraine's court. So we've had successive meetings between Marco Rubio
Speaker 1: and Ukrainian officials, first in Geneva and then in the
Speaker 1: last few days in Florida, where they've been hashing out
Speaker 1: some of Ukraine's objections to the initial elements of that
Speaker 1: twenty eight point plan. Now, at least if you hear
Speaker 1: what the US and Ukraine are saying, they've gotten to
Speaker 1: a point where the US and Ukraine are in broad
Speaker 1: agreement about the current contours of the nineteen point plant
Speaker 1: reduced from twenty eight points. Now Stwidkov is taking that
Speaker 1: back to Moscow. I should say, though, that we really
Speaker 1: don't have any indication that the two sides are any
Speaker 1: closer to bridging what is essentially their fundamental difference, which
Speaker 1: is that Russia basically wants Ukraine to be a rump state.
Speaker 1: They want capsizing the size of Ukraine's military, They want
Speaker 1: Ukraine to essentially declare neutrality. They want NATO membership to
Speaker 1: be completely off the books. They want to take land
Speaker 1: that they occupied as part of their invasion, and also
Speaker 1: they want Ukraine to see land that it still occupies,
Speaker 1: and Ukraine has said that is an absolute red line.
Speaker 1: There's no way it's going to be willing to do that.
Speaker 1: As a sovereign nation. It wants the ability to determine
Speaker 1: its own future, and it doesn't want to have to
Speaker 1: see land that Russia captured in its vision. So we
Speaker 1: really don't have any indication that the two sides have
Speaker 1: been able to bridge those gaps. In fact, everything we
Speaker 1: have heard is that Ukraine is just saying, no, We're
Speaker 1: going to punt those thorny decisions to a late date. Nick.
Speaker 2: We learned through a phone call, the transcript of which
Speaker 2: Bloomberg published, that Steve Whitcoff has been coaching his Russian
Speaker 2: counterpart on how to make his case to President Trump.
Speaker 2: What did we learn from it about the relationship between
Speaker 2: the US and Russia as it stands today.
Speaker 1: It was an extraordinary transcript, not only for its level
Speaker 1: of detail, but for the attitudes that the Trump administration
Speaker 1: seems to be taking. I mean, normally, when you would
Speaker 1: have a negotiation of this contour, of this shape, the
Speaker 1: US would not take such an accommodating stance toward an adversary.
Speaker 1: They would essentially say, Okay, here are red lines. You know,
Speaker 1: if you're going to come at us with this particular
Speaker 1: negotiating demand, I'm just going to tell you, right now
Speaker 1: that is absolutely not going to fly. You would have
Speaker 1: a much more stand offish attitude by the US side
Speaker 1: because you are dealing essentially with an adversary and one
Speaker 1: that has been an adversary for many years. But what
Speaker 1: you see in those in that call is essentially Steve
Speaker 1: Whitcoff taking a much more accommodating stance to Russia, essentially saying,
Speaker 1: as you say, you know, he's coaching the Russians on
Speaker 1: how to get onto Trump's good side, and should say,
Speaker 1: of course that when President Trump was asked about this,
Speaker 1: he just said, listen, Steve is a great negotiator, and
Speaker 1: what he's doing in that call is not really any
Speaker 1: different from what I would expect him to do, and
Speaker 1: he's doing a fantastic job. And it does make me
Speaker 1: think of that hot mic moment you had with President
Speaker 1: Barack Obama and the then Russian President Dmitri Medvedyev some
Speaker 1: years ago around twenty twelve, where he essentially said, Hey,
Speaker 1: just let me get through the election and then we
Speaker 1: can have a conversation.
Speaker 2: My last elections mo. Yeah, and after my election, I.
Speaker 1: Have more tuxt movies. Part of it is it's pretty
Speaker 1: extraordinary to see how this administration takes this much friendlier
Speaker 1: attitude toward Russia. But part of it is also just
Speaker 1: the fact that the conversation has been put out there.
Speaker 1: So many of these conversations from administrations passed on both sides.
Speaker 1: We have no idea what they would have said, and
Speaker 1: you can be sure that you know probably is not
Speaker 1: the first time, and there would have been similar sort
Speaker 1: of approaches by envoys from both parties when dealing with
Speaker 1: Russia in the past.
Speaker 2: Aside from the parts of this plan that deal with territory,
Speaker 2: what are the main tenants of the piece plan that
Speaker 2: is being handled over right now?
Speaker 1: You have Ukraine losing control potentially over this massive nuclear
Speaker 1: power plant in perpetuity. You have Ukraine potentially giving up
Speaker 1: the prospect of NATO membership, and also a cap on
Speaker 1: the size of Ukraine's military The original twenty eight point
Speaker 1: plan put that number at six hundred thousand. I mean,
Speaker 1: just this extraordinary situation where you would have these countries
Speaker 1: essentially telling Ukraine in a pretty unprecedented way you are
Speaker 1: not going to be allowed to make sovereign choices for
Speaker 1: yourself in the future. So NATO membership being a perfect example,
Speaker 1: it asks that Ukraine put in its constitution the commitment
Speaker 1: never to see NATO membership. Of course, that could be
Speaker 1: changed later. But the interesting part of this plan too
Speaker 1: is the sort of economic web that it seeks to spin,
Speaker 1: which would be not only the US Ukraine economic partnership,
Speaker 1: but a US Russian economic partnership that would be unlike
Speaker 1: anything we've ever seen, where there would essentially be US
Speaker 1: involvement in Russia's oil sector, in tapping and extracting natural resources.
Speaker 1: So it seeks to appeal very much to Trump's businessman
Speaker 1: part of the deal instincts, So that's something that sort
Speaker 1: of escaped a lot of notice. Much of it has
Speaker 1: been on the limits to Ukraine. But what we're also
Speaker 1: seeing is this sort of incentivized structure where the US
Speaker 1: would really benefit from this piece deal and seek to
Speaker 1: develop a much deeper and broader economic partnership with Russia,
Speaker 1: which also would mean, by the way, of course, that
Speaker 1: you would have all the lifting of the sanctions against Russia,
Speaker 1: which would benefit Vlaimir Putin enormously.
Speaker 2: What Ukraine wants to make happen and the maneuver it's
Speaker 2: doing this week after the break as US led negotiations
Speaker 2: have gained steam. Another development in Ukraine has picked up speed.
Speaker 2: There's been an ongoing investigation into an embezzlement scandal that's
Speaker 2: rocked President Zelenski's government. I wanted to unpack what Zelenski
Speaker 2: is attempting to do to rally European allies and what
Speaker 2: he's dealing with on the home front with editor Nick
Speaker 2: watams Nick. Because all of this has been playing out,
Speaker 2: Ukraine's President Volombia Zelensky has been trying to rally the
Speaker 2: support of European allies. He was in Paris on Monday
Speaker 2: meeting with Emmanuel Macron. What specifically is he hoping to
Speaker 2: get from them? What kind of support at this moment?
Speaker 2: One is military support. So what President Trump had done
Speaker 2: in recent months was say, listen, we're not going to
Speaker 2: give Ukraine weapons and material and our ammunition the way
Speaker 2: that the Biden administration did. But what we will do
Speaker 2: is allow Europe to buy those weapons and then give
Speaker 2: them to Ukraine. So he really wants Europe to step
Speaker 2: up the purchases of weapons and ammunition, especially at this
Speaker 2: critical time for the Ukrainian military. The other thing he
Speaker 2: essentially really wants more than anything is for European countries,
Speaker 2: which they have done to use their leverage with President
Speaker 2: Trump to try to pull him back from the Russian side,
Speaker 2: and basically also what he really wants is for them
Speaker 2: to just slow down the process. You know, Trump wants
Speaker 2: this thing done as quickly as possible. He wants a deal,
Speaker 2: he wants that handshake, and he wants to move on.
Speaker 2: But what you saw from the Europeans almost immediately once
Speaker 2: this twenty eight point plan came out is to say, Okay,
Speaker 2: hold on, let's take some time here, let's think about this,
Speaker 2: let's slow it down, let's do the conversations.
Speaker 1: We'll meet in Geneva. Then we'll go for round two
Speaker 1: and then maybe round three, just to try to bring
Speaker 1: Trump back on side.
Speaker 2: Someone noticeably absent from those toxes andre Yurmak, President Lenski's
Speaker 2: now former chief of staff, who has been by his
Speaker 2: side through the entirety of this war. He resigned after
Speaker 2: being swept up in this wider corruption investigation in Ukraine.
Speaker 2: The how big of deal is it now that as
Speaker 2: Ukraine goes through this that he is not party to
Speaker 2: these talks, he's not active in negotiation.
Speaker 1: It's a huge deal because andre Yermak has in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways been such an intermediary and a point
Speaker 1: person in the conversations with the United States, so they
Speaker 1: have to sort of reboot a lot of those relations.
Speaker 1: The other thing it's going to do is create this
Speaker 1: sort of sense of suspicion from the Trump administration. I mean,
Speaker 1: corruption has been endemic in Ukraine for a long time.
Speaker 1: I mean when I was covering the first Trump administration,
Speaker 1: we were doing a bunch of trips to Ukraine well
Speaker 1: before the invasion, and corruption was always a conversation. How
Speaker 1: are we going to deal with this? How are we
Speaker 1: going to root it out? What do we do? What
Speaker 1: are the incentives, What are the carrots, what are the sticks.
Speaker 1: It's something they just have not been able to solve.
Speaker 1: Trump has really pounced on this, and it gives you
Speaker 1: a sense of his thinking. When when there's this corruption
Speaker 1: scandal in Ukraine, Trump sees that as a weakness that
Speaker 1: can be exploited to pressure Ukraine into doing something he
Speaker 1: wants it to do. In other words, to say, listen,
Speaker 1: your position is extremely untenable. You have this corruption problem.
Speaker 1: You have to agree to a deal with Russia now,
Speaker 1: even if it's on terms you don't like. And so
Speaker 1: that really gives you a sense of how he's playing this.
Speaker 1: He sees this as a serious problem for Ukraine that
Speaker 1: can be exploited. So it comes at just such a
Speaker 1: bad time for President Zelenski.
Speaker 2: That twenty eight point piece plan gives us a window
Speaker 2: into what Russia thinks it would take to end this conflict.
Speaker 2: How about for the Ukrainians, what would it take for
Speaker 2: them to declare this over?
Speaker 1: I mean, I think what they want is their freedom back.
Speaker 1: They don't want to have limits on the size of
Speaker 1: their military. They want Russia obviously out of the territory
Speaker 1: that it invaded, both in the least couple of years
Speaker 1: but also in the invasion in twenty fourteen. They would
Speaker 1: love to get Crimea back. I think what you would
Speaker 1: see them potentially settle for, and this is something that
Speaker 1: is very, very hotly debated, is there would be some
Speaker 1: willingness to concede some territory, if not by law then
Speaker 1: de facto, so not a formal recognition that Russia has
Speaker 1: that land. But you know, there are examples of this
Speaker 1: all around the world where you see these conflicts, whether
Speaker 1: it's between Greece and Turkey or North and South Korea,
Speaker 1: or elsewhere, or where you have this land that both
Speaker 1: sides claim but is left in a legal limbo. There
Speaker 1: is some indication we're seeing that Ukraine would be willing
Speaker 1: to agree, at least in the short term, to a
Speaker 1: situation where the land was de facto Russian but left
Speaker 1: legally ambiguous.
Speaker 2: I'll ask you lastly, as the Thrill negotiation takes place,
Speaker 2: what's your sense of how much longer Ukraine can hold
Speaker 2: out if it decides this piece steal as drafted as
Speaker 2: a non starter, given the predicament that it's in, given
Speaker 2: Russia's ability to prosecute this war, and it's seeming willingness
Speaker 2: to continue doing that.
Speaker 1: What we know from Vladimir Zelenski's own comments on this
Speaker 1: is that it's going to be a very very difficult winter.
Speaker 1: That Ukraine can get through the winter, but looking into
Speaker 1: next year is going to be really, really difficult. And
Speaker 1: there is this theory of the case. Again, you can
Speaker 1: talk to one hundred analysts and former military officials and
Speaker 1: Ukrainian officials and American officials and Russian officials and get
Speaker 1: one hundred different predictions about what's going to happen next.
Speaker 1: But one theory out there is that things happen very
Speaker 1: very slowly, and then they happen very very quickly. So
Speaker 1: you have these very incremental, tiny changes where Russia slowly
Speaker 1: takes little bites out of Ukrainian territory and then something
Speaker 1: really big happens and they take a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: land all at once. That's why you see Ukraine trying
Speaker 1: to do this thing now of Essentially some of the
Speaker 1: conversations out of Europe is we need to make Ukraine
Speaker 1: like a porcupine, or we need to make it indigestible.
Speaker 1: So we just want to create the condition so that
Speaker 1: Russia can't swallow it up, or at least swallow up
Speaker 1: a significant chunk of territory in the east. That is
Speaker 1: really one of the big concerns. I think you would
Speaker 1: see Europe try to push and step up its purchases
Speaker 1: of materiel, and you will start to see over the
Speaker 1: next year to even more defense weapon reproduction going online.
Speaker 1: But the question is how do you bridge the gap
Speaker 1: between getting through this winter and when that weapon reproduction
Speaker 1: can get online so that Europe can flood the weapons
Speaker 1: of material to Ukraine.
Speaker 2: Nick, thank you very much, my pleasure. This is the
Speaker 2: big take from Bloomberg News. I'm David gurat To get
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Speaker 1: We'll be back tomorrow